At all places I worked at some point some dude who thinks of himself as super smart takes a fucking initiative and decides that "we need to consolidate code on a single product.' And this is like trying to consolidate cat and dog. You don't get a cuddly super loyal thing, you get a bird killing shit eating clawed thing. A cat with dog snout in the ass. In the best of cases they will pull in different directions, in the worst – fucking eat each other.

I could sort of understand this if the "merge" was followed by firing of the half of the staff. But this never happens, because, guess what, the business end remains the same. Both teams now have to mess around a common pool of code but with different goals as far as customer is concerned. Since everyone is now playing in the same sandbox, fixing something breaks something else. Everyone is hating each other, morale drops, so does productivity. Wage slaving, already bad enough, becomes worse.

So, if you suspect that "merge" or "consolidation" is about to happen, look for a new gig, man.